Twisted: Mark Warren on Hitchens

Esquire executive editor Mark Warren's commentary about Christopher Hitchens is all over the map. A masterpiece of post-modernist gobbledygook. A paragon of doublespeak. Warren writes in praise of Christopher Hitchens' new book God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. But he also manages to trash both Dawkins and Harris, argues for the inevitable human need for religion, and mocks Hitchens' atheism (by making reference to the 'creation' of Hitchens by God in the first place)--all in the same review.

That this kind of contradictory and irresponsible mush passes for literary criticism at Esquire documents not only the sorry state of logic, but the evidently diminished value of reasoned discourse in many circles. I've done my level best to parse the meaning of his text, but I'm not sure even Warren knows where he stands.

The Hitchens book is good, that much I agree with. I'm about halfway through, and I'll try to manage my own review in due time. Hitchens makes by far the most colorful arguments of any of the recent anti-god tomes. But Hitchens is saying the same things as Dawkins and Harris, nearly chapter and verse. So how does Warren on the one hand praise Hitchens, and yet have this to say about the other two?

"And speaking of violence, did anybody read The God Delusion, by that guy Richard Dawkins, who says that all the atheists should designate themselves as "brights" to differentiate them from all the knuckle-dragging morons who believe? What an a**hole. Or how about the wishfully thinking The End of Faith, by Sam Harris? Harris is a neuroscientist, you know, and that's quite a credential."

So which is it, Mark: is being a neuroscientist really a credential? Or are you just being sarcastic and demeaning science? I suspect it's the latter. Maybe you should learn a little more about human cognition and ev-psych before you imply that it's got nothing to do with the subject of faith.

As for the ad-hominem attack on Dawkins? You know, I might agree that "The Brights" was not the best political choice for a name for atheists. But to start, the term wasn't the brainchild of Dawkins, it was coined by Paul Geisert and Mynga Futrell of the-brights.net. So how does using the term make Dawkins an a**hole? Further, there IS a negative correlation between religiosity and intelligence. Or put another way: the world's top scientists have abysmally low levels of god-belief. But hey, it's the 21st century, we don't need no steenkin' facts.

Warren continues:

"One need not say any more about the ridiculous Osama bin Laden and the crazy violent fundamentalists worldwide, but what on earth have we done to deserve the Catholic League, for instance, with its public face, the dashing Bill Donohue, who said the accusers of child-raping priests were guilty of "sexual McCarthyism"? (Bill, if you're listening, I offer this advice, one obnoxious former altar boy to another: Shut your trap. You're killing the Church in America. On second thought, carry on.) It is all enough to make one want to banish God. Hence all these books. But do yourself a favor and skip the Dawkins and Harris; they're smug, turgid, and boring, with all the human feeling of a tax return."

So great, Mark, you condemn fundamentalism, and extremist culture warrior Bill Donohue. (How noble and difficult a political position. What courage it takes to pile on child-rapists, hijackers, and suicide bombers.) So far so good, though. At least we agree. But then, suddenly Dawkins and Harris, who also agree and also condemn "crazy violent fundamentalists" have become smug, turgid, and boring. And of course Warren's atheist whipping boys have committed the ultimate sin--being mean--disrespecting religious feelings.

It's exasperating enough to make me want to run out in the street in front of the six synagogues and four churches in my neighborhood and stop traffic: "Hey, did you know atheists are disrespecting your feelings?" "Aren't you upset that there's not more respect for religion in this country?"

And that's really the crux of the issue: People seem less concerned with facts than feelings. Nine out of ten of the reviews whining about Dawkins and Harris have focused on the charge that the authors have been unflinching in their criticism of beliefs. Perhaps one in ten took issue with the actual arguments presented in the books. Warren continues in this grand tradition of bashing the god-bashers:

"But yet, there's something all these utterly rational missalettes miss. The hunger. The need. And for all the bad things it has wrought, the profound and revolutionary social force that religion has been in the life of man. Because we need Him, He persists. No matter how big the book thrown at Him, His book is always bigger. No matter how much closer we get to finding God's face through a telescope, many more of us will still be baying, or praying, at the moon."

Personally, the only time I want to howl at the moon is after a particularly good orgasm. How many more times do we need to deal with this objection? As Dennett, Alper, Newberg, Pinker and many others have shown, we humans have a part of our brains that invents gods and lives perpetually on the subjective. This is the same part of the brain that governs meditation, dreams, fantasies, and hallucinations. No atheist or scientist I've ever met has even hinted we should try to get rid of this deep and rich part of ourselves which is the source for much human meaning. All we are saying is "keep your facts and fantasies straight." And we are especially saying facts matter in the public square.

Every one of the latest crop of popular books on god-belief say essentially the same thing into the teeth of believers: "You don't have facts on your side, and you are not helping the cause of reducing human suffering." That--along with arguing strenuously for admitting the mistakes of the past--in a nutshell is the message of both The God Delusion AND God is not Great. So what's the beef? Hitchens is sophisticated because he's a man of letters--while Dawkins is an uncreative rube because he spent his life mired in the muck of biology? This privileging of the metaphorical over the empirical (essentially style over substance) accomplishes nothing but to demean the relevance of the humanities as currently practiced.

And it would have to be the tetchiest of all critics who would stoop to calling one of the most accomplished scientists of our time an "a**hole."